It seems as if the young people in my generation have the nasty habit of constantly exaggerating and self-diagnosing to express themselves.

Examples off the top of my head:

"I'm an introvert." and "I'm anti-social."

"I have insomnia."

"I'm OCD."

"I'm an alcoholic."

"I'm so poor."

Thoughts on this? Is this a generational thing? What's the deal? Too much webmd?

Are you using the term diagnosis strictly in the medical sense, or do you just mean you notice people labelling themeselves, more?

I ask mainly because introversion's not a mental illness in the sense of an unhealthy psychiatric condition, it's just a pattern of behavior and understanding of what energizes an individual.

I think otherwise, though, society is a bit more open to psych in general -though ofc there is still some stigma- but with that openness, as well as the new info available- and easy access via the intertubes.. it only makes sense that people would sum up things about themselves with general medical terms. People have always had an intrinsic need to define things to some extent or another. Knowledge is power, if you name it, you own it, etc.

Unfortunatley, this also leads to many people using terms out of context without fully understanding their meanings, and also using said self diagnosis as a bandaid to excuse problems they may have, versus actually using that data to attempt to address and resolve said issues.

No, but the language becomes "metaphors we live by" and whatnot. Whether it's really science or not is irrelevant.

If it's a cultural thing to use scientific terms with alternative definitions, then it can't really be inferred from this fact alone that science has ascended. It's degenerative to a portion of the scientific practice.